“Harder To Endure Than Fresh Pain Is Pain That Has Already Been Endured: A Reminder That One Is Not

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

Franz Kafka Illustration for Metamorphosis by Miguel Almagro

and haunting diary entries.

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose The Time War

paradoxical quotes are the best and makes my ne happy.

“A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.” Banksy.

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”  Frank Herbert.

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.” Soren Kierkegaard.  

“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.” Mark Twain.   (this rules! think about it!)

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Mahatma Gandhi.

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.” George Bernard Shaw.

“Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do. ” Zsa Zsa Gabor.

“Failing to plan, is like planning to fail.” Stephen McCranie.  

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”  Oscar Wilde.

“It’s weird not to be weird.” John Lennon.

“Men have two greatest fears: the first fear is the fear of being needed, and the second fear is the fear of not being needed.” C. JoyBell C.  

“And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” Erica Jong. 

“The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart.” Criss Jami.

“Procrastinate now, don’t put it off.”  Ellen DeGeneres.

To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend. Jacques Derrida.

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”  Michel de Montaigne.

“Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.” Albert Einstein.

“Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity”  Stephen King.

“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”  Tony Schwartz.

do you have any recs for your fave queer authors? :)

Oh hum—off the top of my head, my favourite queer authors include (but are not limited to? My brain is a colander):

Malin Rydén (read Fallen Hero and Breaks) Anne Carson (read Autobiography of Red and Bakkhai) Maggie Nelson (read The Argonauts) Mary Oliver (read Felicity and Upstream) Roland Barthes (read A Lover's Discourse) Virginia Woolf (read Orlando and The Waves) Sarah Waters (read Fingersmith and A Little Stranger and The Paying Guests) Carmen Maria Machado (read Her Body and Other Parties) Catullus, Sappho, you get the gist on the Ancients Octavia Butler (read Dawn, Wild Seed) Natalie Diaz (read Postcolonial Love Poem) Daphne du Maurier (although the Gender in there is... well, it's terrifying) Marguerite Yourcenar (read Fires and if you have French, La Couronne et La Lyre) Marlon James' Black Leopard Red Wolf, Jeanette Winterson's The Passion and Alice Oswald's Dart and Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture also come to mind. Gems.

Oh, and for lovey-dovey indulgence, track John Cage's letters to Merce Cunningham. Saps, both of them. (Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West's aren't much better).

I have my eye on Cameron Awkward-Rich's collections, if I can get my hands on them, Langston Hughes' Montage of a Dream Deffered, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Harry Dodge's My Meteorite: Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing.

“Conversation should touch everything, but concentrate itself on nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

how to make your effects extra special

A reminder that healing is not linear, does not happen overnight and sometimes you discover wounds that you didn’t even know were there. Set backs are a part of your journey. Be easy on yourself.

I was so cruel to my body, & still it never once faltered in kicking/screaming/fighting me alive. I could not imagine a love as steady as the one I hated more than any other.

Swallowing blood, swallowing tears, legs brimming in too-sharp angles

— Topaz Winters, from “battlefield,” poems for the sound of the sky before thunder

a good and sensible adventure story.